Abstract
We propose the silicon photonic optical phased array (OPA) with large scanning angle by using polarization multiplexing. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) switch together with a polarization splitter/rotator is utilized to select the polarization mode input to the OPA. By optimizing the OPA grating emitter, the steering angle can be doubled with the input of the TE/TM polarization modes. An 1 × 16 silicon-based optical phased array with polarization multiplexing is designed as an example. The simulation results show that 77.4° lateral beam steering with no sidelobes via phase tuning and 28.2° longitudinal beam steering via wavelength tuning can be realized.
Highlights
The integrated optical phased array (OPA) has been extensively studied due to its solid-state beam steering capability, which is a good prospect in the fields of light detection and ranging (LiDAR), free space optical communications, and laser display [1]–[3]
The polarization selection section composes of a switch based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and a polarization splitter/rotator (PSR), which is used to switch between the two polarizations
We proposed a design of a polarization multiplexed silicon-based 2D optical phased array
Summary
The integrated optical phased array (OPA) has been extensively studied due to its solid-state beam steering capability, which is a good prospect in the fields of light detection and ranging (LiDAR), free space optical communications, and laser display [1]–[3]. In order to realize the angular steering of the OPA in two-dimensional (2D) space, currently there are two main methods: one is to directly realize the OPA emitter arranged in a 2D array [7]; the other is to tune the scanning wavelength with the one-dimensional (1D) grating array to achieve the 2D steering. 1D grating array together with wavelength tuning is mostly adopted to realize the 2D beam steering. Regarding the beam steering in the longitudinal dimension, the steering range will be limited by the wavelength tuning range of the tunable laser source. There is longitudinal beam steering by thermo-optical tuning of the grating emitter area, but the steering angle can only reach 10° [13]. While the lateral steering angle can maintain as large as 77.4° by using the phase tuning with a waveguide pitch down to 1.2 μm
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